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10/31/2018 08:30 AMWhen she was seven years old, Holly Ridgway had her future all figured out. She wanted to emulate everything her older brother did. She would throw; she would hit; she would be a baseball star. She already wore the same outfit her brother did, a New York Yankees pin-stripe shirt emblazoned with the number seven, and not because it was her age. If you’re a New Yorker of a certain vintage, you know what was so special about that number seven. If it is still a mystery, think of the initials MM—seven was Mickey Mantle’s number.
But then, at age seven, everything changed for Holly. A cousin got a pony. She rode it and her life has been horses ever since.
For over three decades Holly, who lives in Chester, taught at High Hopes, the therapeutic riding center in Old Lyme. Now, though she has retired from teaching, Holly is still involved with High Hopes, which is having its eighth annual Holiday Market on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at its headquarters on Town Woods Road in Old Lyme.
The market features more than 60 vendors, with everything from silk scarves and baby clothes to cheesemakers and gourmet chocolate. Food offerings include Supreme Hot Dogs, Taco Pacifico, Rolling Tomato Brick Oven Pizza, and trucks from Fryborg Restaurant in Milford and Flanders Fish Market.
Organizers have asked attendees bring a non-perishable food item to gain admission to the event. There is no other entrance fee. Last year, the Holiday Market collected some 3,000 pounds of food, all donated to Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantries.
The goal of the Holiday Market, according to Holly, is not fundraising. It is friend raising, telling more people in the community about the work that High Hopes does and interesting more people in volunteering for the organization.
“We couldn’t live without volunteers,” Holly explains, adding that last year volunteers contributed about 33,000 hours of work to the organization.
Since 1974, High Hopes, first called the Lower Connecticut Valley Educational Riding Association, has provided therapeutic riding lessons for people of all ages with a range of physical, mental, and emotional challenges. From its early days primarily working with children, High Hopes has expanded its programs to include veterans, many suffering from post-traumatic stress; families in crisis; adults who have suffered strokes; even seniors trying to cope with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
The facility has a lift so that riders suffering from conditions like cerebral palsy can be placed on horseback. There is a carriage-riding program for those who are not able to participate on horseback. In 2016-’17, some 1,674 individuals participated in High Hopes programs.
Riding, Holly notes, helps with balance, core strengthening, and coordination, but also with a range of other things like socialization, language, overall intellectual competence, and confidence-building.
Holly recalls an autistic child who had never spoken before, but began talking to his horse.
“You should have seen his mother; she was in tears when she saw him,” Holly says.
She tells the story of another rider, a soldier who had served in Afghanistan.
“When she came, she was all hunched over; she couldn’t relax,” Holly says.
But things had changed by the end of her program.
“She was sitting up straight, she had confidence; she had been able to bond with her horse,” Holly says.
On a recent morning, three riders were in the ring; an instructor stood in the center and one staffer led each horse while two others walked on either side of each rider, all of whom were sitting up straight, gripping the horse’s body with their legs, and maintaining balance with the reins in their hands.
“This is not a pony ride,” says High Hopes Executive Director Kitty Statsburg. “There is risk. People grow when they are allowed to risk and accomplish, but this is an environment geared for success.”
Statsburg said an individual plan is created for each rider.
It costs about $140 an hour in addition to overhead for each rider; in some situations other organizations, among them school districts that send children with special needs, contribute, but High Hopes underwrites a portion of the cost for all riders. None of its programs are supported by state funds. The organization raises its budget of approximately $1.5 million a year through private and corporate support.
Instructors are certified by the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship (PATH) and High Hopes is a training center for PATH instructors who come not only from the United States but other countries as well, among them Argentina, Australia, Bosnia, Israel, and Guatemala.
In 1995, when Connecticut hosted the Special Olympics, the riding events were held at High Hopes and Holly was the coach for the Connecticut equestrian team. She recalls there were riding competitors she coached that ranged in age from 10 to 40 years old.
Holly grew up in New Canaan and competed in equestrian events herself as a junior rider. She rode in the National Horse Show when it was held at Madison Square Garden, participating in the prestigious Maclay horsemanship competition.
Her daughter Kate, however, was not as interested in horsemanship. After a series of lessons as a child, Kate, now recently married, said she knew how to post when the horse trotted, so why did she need more riding lessons? And, in fact, as Holly tells it, there were no more lessons.
Holly and her husband Jeff came to this area when he got a job managing Essex Boat Works. They first lived in Essex and spent three years looking for an old house, finally buying one in Chester.
“I’d grown up living in mid-century modern and I loved old paneling and old houses,” Holly explains.
Holly served as a trustee of Camp Hazen for a decade, and is currently on the board of the Brazilian American Youth Cultural Exchange (BRAYCE). At this time of year, in addition to the Holiday Market at High Hopes, she is making boxwood table decorations for the United Church of Chester’s Holiday Fair. She also makes jam for the event and describes herself as a “year-round jammer.”
Now that she has retired from teaching at High Hopes, she and Jeff have been able to take more time to travel. They did a 10-week trip to Australia and New Zealand last year that for Holly had a distinction not related to what they did or what they saw. What Holly says first about their journey of more than two months is that she and Jeff traveled with only one carry-on suitcase apiece.
They now plan a long car trip through the Southwest for this December, but she says there will be more airplane journeys in the future, but with a difference.
“This time I am going to take a larger suitcase,” she says.
At the upcoming Holiday Market, Holly will be on the set up and during the event she will be selling raffle tickets for prizes that include a Subaru Crosstrek, an iPad Mini, and an overnight in New York City with tickets to a Broadway show. Though the odds would say something very different, Holly is upbeat about her luck as a seller of those tickets.
“I will be selling winning tickets,” she says.
But she adds buying a raffle ticket that supports High Hopes is a win-win situation.
High Hopes Holiday Market
High Hopes Therapeutic Riding holds its annual Holiday Market on Sunday, Nov. 11, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at its headquarters, 36 Town Woods Road, Old Lyme. There is ample on-site parking.
Admission is an item of non-perishable food to be donated to the Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantries. For more information, call 860-434-1974 or visit highhopestr.org.